GTS prepared a Parking Management Concept of Operations for Boulevard Riyadh City, one of Saudi Arabia’s premiere entertainment and commercial destinations. For the great majority of visitors, parking forms the beginning and the end of the user experience; therefore, it is of the utmost importance to make the entire parking interface welcoming, user-friendly, and hassle-free. Guided by this philosophy, GTS established a set of objectives for event parking management, with associated performance measures. The objectives included providing a parking reservation tool, maintaining traffic flow, ensuring the system sustains itself financially, improving parking asset utilization, and above all, creating a positive experience. 

To achieve these objectives, GTS identified key concepts for special event parking management. These included pricing to manage parking demand; sensing technologies to determine parking availability in real time; communication technologies to convey parking availability data to visitors; vehicle identification technologies; electronic payment methods; and a reverse auction to optimize pricing. By leveraging the newest technologies to apply these concepts, substantial benefits can be achieved: minimization of circling to look for spaces, minimal need for parking enforcement, predictable parking revenue, and reduced traffic and environmental impacts, among others. The concept of operations also covered a range of related considerations, such as wayfinding, event timing, shade for comfortable walking, and special needs parking. Personnel team structure, parking regulations, and end-user operational scenarios were also included.

The ultimate outcome of this project is to transform parking from a hassle into an easy, trouble-free experience for the user. This transformation of the parking experience has massive economic benefits for the corporation, and brings with it an increase in efficiency and wellbeing for patrons and staff alike. The same principles are applicable to many other high-traffic commercial destinations – in Riyadh and elsewhere.